In the book store this morning I spent a great deal of time looking at The Here and Now: The Photography of Sam Jones. Jones is a very well known photographer who is most famous for his celebrity and advertising (which often features celebrities) work. The book is an impressive collection of celebrity portraits. I didn't buy a copy but only because Borders has it for $40 in the store and I can order it from Amazon for $26. I'm going to buy it and I very much recommend that anyone interested in portrait photography buys it as well. Some of the images are eleborate set pieces including costumes, props and staged locations while others are direct, intimate headshots. All are very interesting and give the portrait photographer lots to examine and think about.
So while all the images in the book are good and interesting and while I encourage you to buy the book that's not what this post is about. This post is about one image in the book, a shot of Tom Cruise that was used for a Time Magazine cover story. The cover story is from 2002, well before any of Cruise's couch jumping or his railing against anti-depression medications. In other words, the image was taken well before any of us started thinking Tom Cruise is crazy. I imagine that when the magazine came out the image was perceived as one of a handsome, charismatic movie star. He looks pretty and has a satisfied grin in the image, like he's got the world on a string as the expression goes. The unfocused colors in the background call to mind stage lights as if to remind us that "this is a movie star" while the deep, deep stare would seem to indicate that viewers can and should trust this man.
Looking at the image this morning in the book store my immediate thought was "wow, he looks like a crazy, charismatic cult leader. He's very frightening." Obviously I'm looking at this image with the Cruise Scientology video still very fresh in my mind. The unfocused lights in the background make me think today of all the science fiction stuff the religion purportedly believes. That satisfied grin? It makes him appear to me like a smug manipulator. Like he knows exactly what to say and how to behave in any situation to get what he wants and that he finds himself quite superior to most everyone else.
All this is to note how much context, current events and individualism very much influence how an image is perceived. As a photographer you cannot always decide when or how your images are displayed but when you can control those things it's wise to put a great deal of time and thought into the details that will influence how your images are received. This includes putting them in context when appropriate, including text descriptions, making sure prints are appropriate sizes, etc.
Wow. It's been a while since I've been excited about something a company is doing so perhaps I'm a little overly giddy but Flickr's partnership with the (US) Library of Congress is just so cool. This joint project, known as The Commons, seeks to have acquire richer descriptions and information for photographs in the Library of Congress' photograph collection.
You're invited to help describe photographs in the Library of Congress' collection on Flickr, by adding tags or leaving comments.*These beautiful, historic pictures from the Library represent materials for which the Library is not the intellectual property owner. Flickr is working with the Library of Congress to provide an appropriate statement for these materials. It's called "no known copyright restrictions."
Hopefully, this pilot can be used as a model that other cultural institutions would pick up, to share and redistribute the myriad collections held by cultural heritage institutions all over the world.
Essentially the Library of Congress is going to throw historical photographs from their collection into their Flickr account. We, volunteers will help catalog/identify/describe those photographs by adding appropriate tags and comments. This is a very cool project that allows community involvement, by using new technology in the process of documenting history the preceded us. Meaning, yes we can make and document history and we do everyday with our Flickr accounts but we can also record and describe historical photographs that predated us. We can make historical photographs more relevant and more easily found by increasing the knowledge and information associated with them.
I've been without a Flickr pro account for nearly a year because I haven't needed the space or any of the pro bells or whistles. Supporting projects and initiatives like this totally makes me want to get a pro account again just to support Flickr.
I totally love the openness of this project. I also love Flickr's note about being involvement with this project:
Any Flickr member is able to add tags or comment on these collections. If you're a dork about it, shame on you. This is for the good of humanity, dude!!
A couple months ago I received a copy of Digital Stock Photography How to Shoot and Sell by Michal Heron from the publisher. I'm terribly behind in reading and reviewing it but it was a good, inspirational book to read near the first of the year so alls not lost.
Looking at the title and cover of the book I wrongly assumed it would focus on microstock. Perhaps because I'm such an internet person when I think "stock photography" I automatically think of microstock as well as the big agencies like Corbis and Getty. Microstock is actually barely touched on in this book and the term "microstock" isn't used at all. Instead sites like istockphoto are referred to as stock portals. Not using the common term and not discussing microstock in depth seems an odd choice but I really can't say the book suffers from that choice. If anything it's a really nice reminder that the world of stock photography existed long before the concepts of royalty-free and microstock were ever dreamed up and will probably (hopefully) be around for even longer still.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all know there is no way to completely keep people from stealing your images if you put them on the internet. That doesn't mean you can't encourage people to not steal them. It doesn't mean you can't encourage them to do the right thing. I wrote on this topic almost two years ago and said "my philosophy is to help people and give them the opportunity to do the right thing and most often they will. On my photography website I list a copyright notice on every page stating that all the work on the site is mine. This reminds people that a real person created all the content on the site and if they take it they’re taking it from a real person. Beyond that though I offer the opportunity to buy prints and licenses of my work. I make contact information easy to find and encourage people to contact me with questions or comments about my work. I encourage them to do the right thing."
Derek Powazek has done some thinking about this topic as well. He personally doesn't like putting copyright notices or watermarks directly on his images because 1) it distracts from the image and 2) determined thieves will just crop them our anyway. He's come up with an alternative though. It's a technique for photographers to use on websites that puts copyright notices, reminders about not stealing and contact information in a format that's hidden from view (and therefore doesn't interfere with the image like watermarks can) until someone right clicks on the image.
It's a cool, simple technique that adds a layer of encouragement to your photos. Encouragement? Yep, encouragement. It's not adding any more protection to your photos but it is subtly reminding people that taking your image without permission is wrong and encouraging them to do the right thing by either not taking your image or by contacting you and asking your permission/requirements for usage.
The photo editors from Wired Magazine have chosen their favorite photos of 2007. They made sure to be clear that these are their favorite photos not necessarily the "best" photos (whatever that means). I'll be honest, I only really like, either from an artistic or a technical standpoint, 3 out of their 10.
The book includes an essay by Wendell Berry (he's actually the subject of some of the photographs) that is as profound and brilliant as any of Berry's work.
Though it's not even remotely the same situation I can't help but think of the Lane Hartwell situation when I see my local public radio station (which is my favorite radio station in the world by the way) asking for photo submissions. There is absolutely no payment for these photos should they be used by the station, and oh year the station claims ownership to any photos submitted.
Read the whole story and my hopefully rational letter to the station about it
If you haven't been following the Lane Hartwell situation Derek Powazek has a really good wrap up of events up to this point.
Lane has just released her statement about the situation and it has caused me to reaffirm my complete support of her and her actions. Many people have said they're happy when others steal their works because it means the work is good enough to steal or they're happy when people steal their works and then create new works because hey new stuff is cool. That's great for those people. I encourage those people to release all of their works under the appropriate Creative Commons license and be happy and merry and bright with all the sharing and the stealing. I don't mean that sarcastically. If you don't mind your work being taken and re-used that's great but here's my issue: the creator, gets to choose if people can take and re-use his work. If someone posts his work on the internet and explicitly says that all rights are reserved then all rights are reserved by that artist. End of story. If the artist releases his work under a creative commons license that allows use or perhaps the artist even just says, basically, sometimes people steal my work but cool sometimes cool stuff comes out of that theft so I'm just going to say "ok take my stuff" that's fine, but each and every person creating original work, in my opinion, gets to make that decision.
And I think that saying "people on the internet are going to steal so suck it up" is bullshit. That's kind of like saying "people in the real world are going to commit armed robbery so suck it up." Yeah, some people on the internet steal stuff just like some people in the physical world steal stuff. That doesn't make it right in either instance.
It's that time of year again. Reuters has released their Pictures of the Year 2007.
There is some amazing work in this collection but at least a couple images I would describe as "disturbing" because of the gore or violence contained in them. So consider yourself warned if you're easily disturbed by violence and its aftereffects.
Flickr has released the new version of their uploader for Mac and Windows. Version 3.)
The all new version for Windows and Mac OS X makes it easy to add titles, tags and descriptions to photos, add them to sets and adjust each photo’s privacy settings. Plus, for the first time ever, you can reorder your photos before uploading by simply dragging them into place!
